Preparing for a Session

"Wait, what do you mean by that, Sammy?" Blue asked, "How are you a psychologist?"

"I have some abilities that would allow me to help those who have ailments of the mind. And I don't mean some magical effect, but issues that you have to deal with. For instance, I can make illusions to help you face a fear or help you cope with a situation. I can even help someone say goodbye to a lost loved one to give them closure. To be clear, that would be fake. The version of the person who passed away would be purely a representation of your memories. However, that can also help in some cases. The water of this place can also help you unlock memories that are hidden or that were lost," Sammy chuckled, "It's almost a way to time travel through your past if you ask me."

"Oh… and that is the reason for the name of the room?" Hera asked.

"Wait, what? What does this have to do with the room?" Adriel turned to Hera.

"When I saw the name, I thought it was a bad pun. Thirmal Waters, like a mix of thermal and time," Hera explained what Shiretaa told her. Then again, this shouldn't be something too far-fetched.

"I guess that makes sense, but I never look that deeply into the room names," Adriel shrugged.

"That shows you focus more on what's in front of you than the possibilities ahead. It's not a bad outlook, but you might sometimes miss something important. Then again, searching for a hidden meaning in everything would be more worrying. That would be a very big sign of anxiety and maybe some other deeper issue," Sammy continued.

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand one thing, Sammy," Bonnie spoke up. And as the turtle turned to face her, who was on the couch, she continued, "How can this help us get rid of the curse?"

"Ah, yes. Let me explain," before continuing, he stopped and looked towards the shelf with the pots that were making drinks, "One moment," a couple of hands made out of water appeared and started preparing everything. Hera, Blue, and Alex took some hot chocolate, Bonnie, Helena, and Shane, Coffee while Mylo got some green tea. The only one who didn't get a hot beverage was Adriel, who chose something cold from the mini-fridge instead.

"Man, this is amazing," Alex smiled after taking a sip.

"I'm glad this is up to par. I honestly never served this type of drink before. It's all relatively new to me," Sammy continued.

"But you have treated people before?" Shane asked.

"I have, although the definition of people that you have now and the one that I have might be different."

Hera and Shane locked eyes for a moment before the Empress spoke up, "Were they a different civilization?" she suspected that maybe this had to do with the guides, and before any suspicion arose, she wanted to guide everyone in a different direction.

"I'm afraid I can't say. As you would call it, I'm under a doctor-patient confidentiality agreement. Nothing that happens here can be shared with other people without their explicit permission," Sammy smiled at Hera.

"That's kind of a yes, isn't it?" Blue asked.

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't," Sammy chuckled.

"That's fine and all, but how can you get rid of the curse? You still haven't told us!" Bonnie gasped.

"Right. My apologies. I never had this many people with me at the same time, and I'm trying to give some attention to everyone. Although I have treated people before, to remove the curse, I will need to do something I have never done before. This plan was proposed by the relic that informed of this situation. However, I believe that this might have some hand of the system as well. I can't say for sure, but it's just a hunch. Either way, the plan is to use my abilities to do what I call memory diving. This allows me to guide someone through their memories so they can relieve their past with new eyes. But instead of doing that with one of you, specifically, we will do it with the curse itself."

"How can that help us?" Helena asked.

"By itself, it won't. Memory diving has no physical effect on you, and there is no risk attached to it. However, I also have this," Sammy turned his head to the side, and a water hand came carrying a blue mushroom with yellow and green spots, "This is something that has been growing here for a very long time. When a small amount of it is used together with a drink, it is able to trick your mind into believing that your past is actually happening. This allows you to feel some pain and even makes your body react as it should to a certain extent. With the doses that I used, no one was seriously injured, but they could feel when their bodies were burned or hit, and when they returned, there were marks on the spots where they were hit. Those marks were much weaker than the ones they saw in the past, but that's only due to the dosage of this mushroom," Sammy explained.

"So you are giving us psychedelics to make our vision more real?" Bonnie scoffed.

"Correct," Sammy nodded with a chuckle, "I understand your doubt, but I must say, I agree with the plan. From what I gather, the curse gains power when you know more about it and know what it can do. This means that its power comes from belief, or faith, whatever you prefer to call it. The plan is to go to its past, to a point where the curse wasn't able to do what it can do now, or maybe even before it was created, and use that belief to make it believe that it never existed or that it was destroyed before it could grow to what it is today. Unfortunately, to trick the curse successfully, you will have to take a very high dose of the mushrooms, and that will make it so your bodies understand everything that is going on as real."

"Does that mean that if we get hurt in the dive, we get hurt out here?" Helena asked.

"Your body will feel as if what happens in the memory is real. If you get injured in some way, your real body will also feel that pain. That doesn't mean that if you lose an arm, you will also lose an arm in your real body, but the pain will still be there. And if you end up dying, your body will act accordingly," Sammy said with a solemn voice.

"So we can die there?" Mylo asked.

"With the dosage required for this to work, you can. We need to make the memory dive as realistic as possible so the curse doesn't have a chance to understand that what is going on is not real," Sammy continued.

"Hang on, but wouldn't the curse already know? I mean, we are talking about it," Bonnie scratched her head.

"Yes, but the curse should know how prone to lying people are. It will trust its senses more than it would trust what you say. In a situation where you say, 'this is fake,' but the curse can see that you are feeling pain, it will believe that what is happening is real. Then, by destroying the curse in the past, we will make it believe that it should already be dead."

"Wouldn't it be smart enough to understand that it can't have died because it is still alive? I mean, the curse shows a lot of intelligence every now and then," Alex asked.

"I understand that worry, and I share that with you. This is why we will be using a very high dose of the mushroom. Aside from it being hallucinogenic, it also has the property of making those who consume it more likely to follow suggestions. By using that to make you all believe that you will be actually traveling to the past, we can make the curse believe that if it is destroyed there, it will also be destroyed in the present," Sammy continued.

"Wouldn't we also be more susceptible to suggestions?" Mylo asked.

"Correct. In order for it to affect the curse, it will also have to affect you. However, the effects are a bit more nuanced than you might be thinking. That suggestion effect will only work when you are here. The moment you go into the memory dive that won't be an issue. Of course, I will convince you all that you are actually going back in time instead of just seeing a memory. Then inside, you will be able to move around unimpeded and without having to worry about that suggestion effect since inside the memory, the effects of the mushroom will appear to have vanished," Sammy explained.

"And what will happen with our bodies while we are there?"

"You will be here. I will cast a spell on you to make you in a state similar to a stasis. I cannot tell you how long this will last, but even if it takes months, I will be able to keep you all in peak condition," Sammy noticed the worried expressions they all had and continued, "That being said. I doubt it would take that long. The progress of time is different when inside a memory."

"How different?" Hera asked.

"It varies. Some memories move faster than others, but the longest I stayed inside a memory felt like three weeks, but in reality, only a day passed here. On the other side of things, the longest that a session took was three days, and we only spent about 8 days inside their memories."

"Did you notice something that would explain that difference?" Helena took a bite out of her chocolate-covered candy bar.

Sammy looked down for a moment with a serious expression, and after thinking, he answered, "Yes. The first individual, the one whose session only took one day of real-world time, had a scattered mind, so to speak. We would jump from location to location as we followed the memories instead of walking the path, even if it was just across the street. They also only focused on what they considered to be important. While the second one, when the session took three days, they were much more detail-oriented. We walked together with every single step of their memories. Not to get too much into the details, but they believed they missed some details and could have done things differently if they had noticed. Hence their need to see everything. We also moved through a few of the memories multiple times, which should have increased the time it took us to get back. That is not something we will be able to do in this situation. In order to make the curse believe that we will actually be in the past, we must avoid any incongruences."

"Incongruences?" Mylos asked.

"He means anything that is out of place. Like a time skip or some object that shouldn't be there. Right?" Shane explained, but in the end, she also felt unsure of her answer.

"That is precisely it. I also need to warn all of you. Your items will change when you go inside a memory. Anything that could not exist at the time, like your tablets or communicators, will not be with you there, and the appearance of some of your items might change. This is also true for any spells that might be too advanced, although I don't think that will be much of a problem for all of you." Sammy continued.

"What about legacies? Will they still be there?" Hera asked, worried that she might be going there without Daskka, Nimbus, Lurize, and the rest of her court.

"Legacies, yes. By definition, they break some rules. However, your relics are a different story. Hera, yours will probably be mostly intact, but the visor and the question part won't work simply because your body is not where it is supposed to be. Shane, yours will change into a sling. A projectile launcher like the one you have is too advanced to make sense. But I believe I can adapt it to work in two parts. A pouch that makes ammo and the sling. Adriel, yours is much harder to adapt. I think, at most, I can make it a bird, but even then, it would be tricky. Mimicking a live animal that is not part of the memories might cause problems. I will make all of you believe that this was always how it was, and Adriel, maybe we can say that you had to sacrifice your relic, the bird, to escape a dangerous beast."

"Yeah… if you ask you to go to a place without tech, a drone is a bit too far off the loop. Even if we make it like a Victorian thing, it will still be weird. But that's fine. My relic is more of a travel thing. I don't think it would help much. Except for scouting, but then we have Nimbus for that," Adriel nodded.

They continued their discussion for some time. Just confirming if their spells and skills would still work. Since there was a possibility that some things were too advanced, they wanted to make sure not to be using anything that could show the curse how they were not in the past.

After a couple of hours, they ran out of questions, and Sammy asked, "So, do you all accept going through this treatment?" everyone nodded, with Alex being the last one to do so after some hesitation, "Ok then. I'll start the preparations. Feel free to ask any questions you want as I do so or attack my fridge. Everything here is to make you more comfortable," Sammy smiled as he began cutting the mushroom and preparing the tea that would start the whole process.